The ancestral home of the Modoc Tribe of Oklahoma, or Captain Jack’s Band of Modoc Indians, consisted of over 5,000 square miles along what is now the California-Oregon border. On the west loomed the perennially snow-capped peaks of the majestic Cascade Mountains; to the east was a barren wasteland of alkali flats scaling to the peaks of the Warner Mountains in the Sierra-Nevada range; towering forests of Ponderosa pines and shores of majestic bodies of water and rivers were to the north while the Lava Beds, now a National Monument, and the Medicine Lake volcano range to Mount Shasta formed their southern boundary.